Hours later, I was in a recovery room. I had given birth via emergency C-section to a small, perfect, dangerously premature baby boy. I was exhausted, weak, but alive. And my son was alive, fighting in the NICU.
Thomas sat beside my bed, a silent, powerful guardian. The door opened again. This time, it was Daniel.
He looked… awful. He was pale, his suit rumpled, his eyes wide and haunted. He wasn’t the calm, cold man who had walked out on me. He looked like a man running for his life. He looked at me, then at the empty bassinet, then his gaze landed on Thomas Reed.
And his face went from panicked to utterly, abjectly horrified.
“Mr… Mr. Reed?” he stammered, his voice a choked whisper. “What… what are you doing here?”
Thomas, who I now knew was one of the most feared federal prosecutors in the country, looked at him with cold, dawning comprehension. “I’m with my daughter,” he said slowly.
Daniel’s legs gave out. He collapsed into the visitor’s chair, his head in his hands. “Oh my God,” he moaned. “Oh my God, Emily, you don’t understand.”
He looked up at me, his eyes brimming with a desperate, terrified confession. “I had to leave you! I had to push you away! I had to make you hate me!”
“What are you talking about, Daniel?”
